The Formation of Ethnic Minority Identities and Their Social Inclusion
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| Year of publication | 2006 |
| Type | Chapter of a book |
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| Description | Building on the sociology of Pierre Bourdieu, we claim that it is essential to reflect on how the practical sense of ethnicity contributes to the social reality of ethnocultural identities, how social actors' practical knowledge about ethnicity contributes to their ethnocultural identity. The complex relationships among various – minority as well as dominant – ethnic identities constitute the "field of ethnicity". As an instrument of social orientation in this field, the sense of ethnicity is not merely a sense of difference, it is a sense of hierarchical distinction, too. Political strategies of social inclusion through integrating minority ethnic identities inevitably modify the whole structure of the field of ethnicity. However, recent strategies of social inclusion by conceiving the cultural diversity of Czech society exclusively in the form of ethnic diversity and by treating the Czech national identity as a distinct form of ethnic identity exclude all other ethnocultural identities from the imagined ethnic community of the Czech nation. |
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